Time once again for the monthly food blogging event, Is My Blog Burning - hosted this month by Foodgoat. The chosen theme this month is orange. No, not "oranges" but rather the colour orange to be exact. And interesting theme idea, and the first one to be a colour. Should prove to be quite interesting to read the round-up!

Deciding on a recipe was a bit more difficult for this IMBB. It's easy to look through cookbooks and clippings for a recipe featuring a theme ingredient such as fish or spirits, or to come up with recipes for specific things like cakes, cookies or terrines (well, not so easy for terrines!). But to build a recipe around a colour? Not so simple. Some colours would have been easier, like brown (chocolate), green (most vegetables) or even yellow (cheese), but orange? What foods are orange?

Images of sweet potato souffles and caramelized carrots danced in my head for a week while the idea of orange food was in the back of my mind. Saffron rice and orange chicken crossed it briefly as did an orange angel food cake at one point. Even salmon sushi popped in there - actually that was my first thought but as sushi is one of the few things I have promised myself I will not attempt at home at this point I would have ended up writing about take-out, not home-cooked food for IMBB (and I don't think that is allowed...!). So...still with the question - what food can I cook that is orange?

I posed just that question to S. about a week ago while I was pondering what I would make this weekend for IMBB. He, being him quickly quipped: "saffron, lentils and chili's". Well. Okay. Let's make something with saffron, lentils and chili's then, shall we? Not familiar with cooking lentils as all, I went to my usual resource - epicurious. There, after many hours of searching I finally found a recipe that I could make and would enjoy.

I altered it quite a bit to bring out more orange colour within the final result and ended up with quite a delicious dinner for S. and I last night. What we ended up with was red lentil ravioli with tomato sauce...and if you read the recipe carefully you'll see just how much orange colour there was - layers and layers of it, to be honest!

The sauce is tomatoes and orange spices, with skim milk added to it, making it orange. The ravioli pasta has saffron and paprika in it, making it a very pale orange hue. The filling has red lentils (which really are orange) and orange spices in it. AND: I topped it with some spicy olive oil...which is orange from all the spices in it. Wow.

I think I took using orange in one dish to an entirely new level with this recipe. And enjoyed doing it...thanks, Foodgoat!